Looking for empirical evidence of data-driven learning at lower levels

One application of corpora involves language learning through direct contact with language corpora, often referred to as data-driven learning (DDL). It is often assumed that the approach is unsuitable for lower level learners, but this has rarely been empirically tested. This paper describes a simple experiment on phrasal verbs with 113 lower intermediate learners of English. They were tested on two items – pick (up) and look (up) – before and after exposure to raw concordance print-outs. This allowed us to test a specific research question: Can lower-level learners extract benefit from the raw data of a concordance print-out? The results are encouraging, suggesting that even lower level learners can derive some benefit from corpus data, and that DDL should be added to their armoury of techniques. One problem with DDL is that, despite numerous papers citing theoretical arguments in its favour, empirical evidence is hard to come by. If DDL is to be taken seriously and break into mainstream teaching practice, then empirical testing is essential to understand the conditions where it may be of use and to convince the sceptics while not appearing as blind enthusiasts. The importance of a single experiment should not be overstated; what is needed is the weight of evidence from many empirical studies on different questions. The simple experiment reported here is deliberately modest in its design and aims in order to show that useful empirical results are not hard to obtain, and in the hope that others may therefore be encouraged to conduct their own empirical studies.